Fr. Bear Blasts Proposed Changes to Interior and EPA Regulations

Excuse me for the interruption, but can this be right? The US people elect a new president, and the old one issues potentially binding regulations on his way out to undermine the Endangered Species Act?

From the Friday, 11/21 Washington Post:

The Interior Department wants to revise the application of the Endangered Species Act. The Environmental Protection Agency wants to do the same with the Clean Air Act. If what's being proposed goes through, air quality in and around national parks, and threatened plant and animal species, would be imperiled. President-elect Barack Obama might be saddled with policies that run counter to his environmental vision.

Interior's action on the Endangered Species Act was the result of listing the polar bear in May as "threatened" under that law because of climate change. The statute was never intended to regulate the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet and melting the Arctic ice habitat of polar bears. So Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne proposed stripping the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and other agencies of their roles in consulting with federal departments on building projects that are "likely to adversely affect" a listed species.

The rationale that their experience complying with the Endangered Species Act gives agencies enough expertise to determine for themselves whether a project is likely to harm a species, not just polar bears, is flawed. Without those protective services in the consultative loop, there will be no check against the ambitions of agencies that want to complete projects -- and no safeguard for threatened and endangered species in the agencies' path.

From Channel 7 KGO-TV (ABC) in San Francisco:

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- As the Bush administration was opening up new oil leases in the Arctic last year, government scientist Steven Amstrup was called to Washington to testify on the impact of global warming on polar bear habitats. "Within the next 50 years or so that population of polar bears could decline by approximately two-thirds," Amstrup told the committee.

The chair of the House committee that heard the testimony said the new drilling would further threaten the polar bears. But under changes proposed by the Bush administration, testimony like Amstrup's would be irrelevant. Plans for any project on public lands could be approved without considering the impact on endangered wildlife.

"It's basically saying 'we aren't going to consider science, it's all going to be driven by politics,'" Deputy Executive Director of the Sierra Club Bruce Hamilton said. "To come in at the 11th hour and say, 'oh, we forgot to screw the Endangered Species Act before we leave office, let's make sure we do that...'"

Hamilton calls it a disservice to the American public.

Yes, indeed, brothers and sisters, that may well be, but what Hamilton calls a "disservice" could put us ice bears and hundreds of other natural beings out of our ancestral homes. We're not talking about some minor inconvenience here -- we're talking forced displacement, habitat destruction and eco-cide.

President Bush, no thank you! I can't use your eco-fascist groove thang.

As Malcolm X has said, we didn't land on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us. We animals didn't ask to be discovered, visited, photographed or displaced by you humans. We didn't think destroying the planet's forests, polluting its air, and drilling for oil in ANWR were such great ideas, among others. The least you could do is to leave some pretense of fairness in your environmental laws.

(Yeah, I said it... )

Sincerely,

Fr. Paul R. Bear, PBB (Polar Bear Blogger)
Artic Snowfields
Greenland/North Pole
http://www.carbonconfession.org/

Confess carbon sins -- embrace 12 steps to Carbon Forgiveness
Step #1: admit you are a selfish user of global resources

The 12 Steps of Carbon Awareness

The 12 Steps of Carbon Awareness

1. We admit that we are selfish users of the earth's limited resources. Standing alone, we feel powerless to stop our wasteful ways. We resolve to manage our lifestyles more effectively, to address the rapidly mounting ecological crisis.
2. We believe that through increased social awareness we can reduce our individual and collective carbon footprint.
3. We have decided to step up our social activism until such time that global warming is effectively stabilized and reversed.
4. We will conduct a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our behavior together on this planet.
5. We will reveal the exact nature of our wrongs to the natural and social world.
6. We resolve to overcome the persistent defects of character that result in our imposing an excessive carbon burden on the planet and other human beings.
7. We invite other conscious consumers and natural beings to help us overcome our personal and collective shortcomings.
8. We will engage in a regular program of study and inquiry to understand all the persons, natural beings and planetary processes we may have harmed and disrupted, and to the extent possible, we commit to making amends to them all.
9. We will make direct amends to nature and other people injured by reckless use of resources wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. We will continue to take personal inventory, and when we are wrong, we will promptly admit it.
11. We will look within ourselves and our communities to mobilize a collective response that is fully commensurate with global warming and other pending ecological threats.
12. Having achieved profound clarification and inspiration through these steps, we will also carry this message to other compulsive consumers. By our example and leadership in increasing our social activism and changing our destructive lifestyles, we will encourage them to practice these principles in their affairs as well.

If you are are guzzling oil compulsively and can't stop, the first step to recovery is to admit that you are a selfish user of the world's resources, and that you need help. Until we admit we have a problem, we can't make progress.

If you wish to divest your Hummer and unburden yourself of your carbon sins, confess to Fr. Paul R. Bear at CarbonConfession.org and visit the Tree of Carbon Forgiveness for absolution.

Do you have a "carbon sin" to confess?

Do you have a "carbon sin" to confess?

Common Carbon Sins:

- Driving a gas guzzler
- Taking unnecessary personal car trips
- Failing to car pool
- Failing to take mass transit
- Using too much heat or air conditioning
- Buying a house that is too large
- Failing to us a programmable thermostat
- Overconsumption of clothes and footwear, when you already have plenty to wear
- Leaving lights on all over the house
- Using the dryer when you could use a clothesline
- Using disposable paper OR plastic bags, when you could have used a reusable canvas bag- Printing large documents on only one side of the paper
- Using virgin paper when you could have used recycled paper
- Flying or driving a long way to meetings where little or nothing is accomplished- Throwing away recyclables
- Using incandescent bulbs when you could use compact fluorescent bulbs

If you wish to unburden yourself of your carbon sin, confess to Fr. Paul R. Bear at CarbonConfession.org and visit the Tree of Carbon Forgiveness for absolution.

European Bishops publish report on climate change

GENEVA -An expert group set up by COMECE last January and chaired by the former EU-Commissioner Prof Franz Fischler yesterday published its report.

The document: 'A Christian View on Climate Change; underlines the huge challenge that climate change represents for mankind. It calls on European leaders to anchor their climate change policies in ethical thinking, based on inter-generational justice and solidarity towards countries of the South. The experts also call on the Church and on Christians to show an example by adopting life styles based on moderation.

It must be recognised that the fight against climate change is first of all a problem of public ethos. It will be hard to solve without challenging certain ways of organising society, without questioning the ways we live together and the value system of civil society. In order to convince citizens to fundamentally change their way of thinking and living, political leaders should turn to profound ethical reflection and debate.

According to the report, this reflection could be based on Christian theology which has developed interesting ideas on this topic. Above all, the values and principles of the social teaching of the Church - global justice, disposition towards the weakest, subsidiarity, solidarity and responsibility for the common good - could allow climate change policies to be assessed.

The authors of the report emphasise the fact that climate change is especially an issue of intra- and inter-generational justice. Consequently, they call on the European Union to take up the leadership and to raise its voice for the developing countries and for future generations who bear or will bear the highest burden of climate change.

The authors underline the fact that the EU bears a special responsibility for combating climate change, in view of its technological and financial means and its experience with cooperative action. The EU should show the example and convince all actors concerned of the necessity of protecting the Earth's climate.

The report recalls that climate change is but one symptom of an unsustainable way of life, modes of production and patterns of consumption that have evolved in the industrialised world but which are not sustainable in future.

It calls on citizens to question their own lifestyles that are too dependent on material goods and to base them much more on cultural and relational goods. In fact, our lifestyles should be based on voluntary 'moderation', a central virtue that should be understood as having the aim, not of diminishing, but rather of supporting a higher quality of life and a greater reason to rejoice.

The Catholic Church and all the Christians are best placed to propagate such changes in lifestyles, through concrete proposals and by their modest examples. In order to contribute to the debate on Climate Change, the COMECE Bishops officially decided on 23 November to set up an ad hoc Working group on "EU Climate Change Policies and Christian Lifestyle". The Working group, which consists of 10 European personalities from Politics and Science, will submit its report to the COMECE Bishops on the occasion of their Plenary Assembly, on November 12-14 next. The full report will be available at www.comece.org

30 October 2008

© Independent Catholic News 2008

Metaphorical Icebergs?

Hooray, the humans are deconstructing metaphorical icebergs and decolonizing their minds!!

Being a bear of little brain, I can't tell if this will stop the melting trend -- and the breakup of the real, actually existing icebergs -- but it's nice to see at least someone is paying attention...

Climate Change Is Changing Theology
Theologians Consider the Shifts Needed in Thinking and Action

GENEVA, 30 October 2008 (LWI) –"Climate change is opening up horizons that are deeply spiritual, theological and cosmic inscope. [It] may literally be melting icebergs but it also exposes metaphorical icebergs of how God, human beings and the rest of creation have been conceptualized in ways that contribute to the injustices that have only increased under climate change."

This observation from a background paper prepared by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for Theology and Studies (DTS) set the stage for a consultation of biblical scholars,theologians and ethicists working in this area, 2-4 October, in Geneva.

Background information for the consultation included the grassroots survey initiated by DTS to get response to ordinary people’s theological questions about climate change, and the related extensive adaptation and mitigation work that the LWF Department for World Service (DWS) field programs have long been pursuing with local communities. (The LWF survey is presented in the LWI special edition titled, "Climate Change - Facing Our Vulnerability", available online at: www.lutheranworld.org/What_We_Do/OCS/LWI-2008-PDF/LWI-200805-EN-low.pdf )

Dr Sigurd Bergmann who teaches at the Norwegian University ofScience and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, emphasized the need for a "spatial turn" in
theology, taking Earth seriously as "ourhome where the Holy Spirit takes place."

Such a spatial turn resonates with how indigenous people view the sacred manifesting itself in space, added Rev. Tore Johnsen from his own Sami perspective as a pastor in the Church of Norway. He noted that indigenous people worldwide were the most vulnerable to climate changes, and they do not separate
nature and human beings as in much of Western theology.

Johnsen advocated pursuing theology within a "circle of life" that includes God, human beings and the rest of creation, proposing how this both relates to and revises traditional Christian understandings.

Spiritual Resources

Giving an account of what his students heard when they went out to local communities using the LWF survey, Dr George Zachariah,who teaches at the Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute in Chennai, India, focused on the spirituality of those displaced from their land and livelihood because of climate change. He argued that many prevailing climate change discourses were an attempt to "absolve the sins of neo-liberal capitalist plunder," and called for attention to the spiritual resources of subaltern communities that can "decolonize our minds, our faiths, our communities, and our planet."